Research questions and methodology for my dissertation

   Before the term 2 was over in March, I got some feedbacks about the proposal of my dissertation from my professors. I have changed the design of my research a little and decided to focus on corporate communications of national brands after the huge national trauma, i.e. the Great Earthquake in Japan.

   My initial research questions were;

l  In order to gain a reputation, should companies focus on key stakeholders such as the customers and supply chains or the general public for disaster relief?

l  How can PR strategically get involved in disaster relief?

   However, my professors advised me to see how Japanese companies or foreign affiliated companies in Japan communicated with the people because companies are now considered to have great social responsibility to react to it. It is quite difficult to handle the situation, but companies need to be prepared to a natural disaster. If they kept silent after the disaster, they would be regarded as irresponsible. Some CSR activities after the hurricanes in the US and the earthquakes in China were already researched by some scholars. It is also important to compare the CSR policy of the company with what they actually did. So, the new research questions will be;

l  How did companies in Japan react to the huge national trauma?

l  Had the policy suggested that they were ready for the disaster beforehand?

l  What do people say about the contribution of the company after the disaster?

Quest for my research questions---

   In terms of methodology, my professors agreed to employ case study with in-depth interviews of the senior managers, employees and experts on CSR in the UK and Japan. Since I have already contacted to the communication teams of some of the global companies before I came to the UK last year, I will ask one of them for interviews and analyse how the media reported their activities.

Literature review on CSR

   Professor Adela Rogojinaru from University Bucharest, Romania, provided a useful literature review of corporate social responsibility (CSR) at Erasmus Intensive Programme in Belgium in March. The growth of the concept of corporate responsibility is closely related to the topic for my dissertation which will discuss how companies in Japan reacted to the Great Earthquake last March and communicated with the people after the national trauma.

   In 1960’s CSR was considered a sort of burden or supplement for companies. Nobel Prize scholar Milton Friedman states in his book Capitalism and Freedom (1962) that CSR is “against the welfare policy, toxic for the business environment”, although “it may well be in the long-run interest of a corporation because it may reduce the wage bill or lessen losses from pilferage and sabotage”.

   Ed Freeman challenged the idea of Friedman. In 1984 Freeman introduced the concept of a stakeholder approach and identified “group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives”. He argues that if the company wants to keep the business, they “should be managed as if it can continue to serve the interests of stakeholders through time” (Freeman, 1994).

Fujitsu employees building garden shed (cited from Fujitsu)

   European Commission published a report on EUstrategy on CSR in 2011. According to the report EU regards CSR as “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society”. “The company should have in place a process to integrate social environmental, ethical, human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations and core strategy in close collaboration with their stakeholders”. Now CSR covers a wide range of topics such as human rights, labour, environment, combating corruption and community involvement.

   EC also says that CSR can work as risk management, cutting costs and customer relations because the company can anticipate and meet fast changing expectations of the people and social conditions. However there are only 15 out of 27 EU member states which have national policy frameworks to promote CSR.

   At the end of the lecture Professor Rogojinaru picked up the activity of Fujitsu, an electric and ICT company from Japan. Fujitsu focuses on providing opportunities and security through ICT and reducing carbon emission. The company is ranked 13^th in Newsweek Green Rankings2011, the best among Japanese companies. After the Great Earthquake, the company set up the infrastructure and provided the means of access to the information as a part of their CSR activities.

   Like Fujitsu, a lot of Japanese companies voluntarily joined the rescue work. Is it because of the development of CSR, or is the concept of CSR already embedded in Japanese culture? To answer these questions, I will have to discuss the cultural aspect of CSR as well.